Quentin

Ah -- the tried and true rhetorical technique of recasting the argument so that your opponent must "prove a negative."

Sure, it's entirely illogical, and not really a valid means of coming up with a conclusion in any fact-deprived context.... but it is most assuredly a GFY-approved argumentative technique.

There's just one little problem with that line of reasoning, however: by that reasoning, just about any hair-brained assertion can be presented as reasonably possible, because proving a negative is quite often not possible.

I know, I know, formal logic is boring.... so let's just throw it out. Instead, just look at this way; remove the company names from the equation, and here's what you have:

* We don't have any evidence showing that (A) didn't buy AVN (unless you count Fabian's direct statement to that effect... but I suspect that DWB is not about to accept Fabian's word on anything), but someone has started a rumor that (A) purchased AVN

* We also don't have any evidence that (B) didn't purchase AVN either.... but a representative of (B) has directly and publicly claimed to have purchased AVN.

On the one hand, we have a possibility that is entirely speculative.

On the other, we have a possibility that has been asserted proactively and publicly by the very person claiming to have purchased the company.

In your opinion, which of the two claims, (A) or (B), is more likely to be true; the one that is effectively unsupported by any evidence at all, or the one that involves direct, public claims by two different parties/entities?

Another way of putting it (at least for those who are hearing the rumor second or third hand, and not directly from the people who started the rumor): which do you trust more, the statements of people whose credibility you question, or the statements of people whose credibility you cannot even assess at all, because you don't know who they are, or what they are basing their claim on?

__________________
Q. Boyer